The desktop sidebar
Status: implemented (web/m/sidebar.js, web/m/app.js, web/m/index.html).
The wide layout’s sidebar was a header of icons (☰, Dashboard, Chat, the mic, the bell), a “New window” row, the search box, a filter dropdown on the list’s own line, and a foot with Live, the theme and Docs. Every control was one click away, and none of them said what it was. The redesign came out of a mock loop with the user; these are the decisions it settled and why.
Places, settings, and the list
The sidebar holds three kinds of thing, and each now has one home.
- Places you go are two rows under the header, always there: Dashboard and Settings. Chat and Voice are not places but toggles (a panel that opens beside you, a mic that stays on), so they are small icons in the header, between the name and the collapse, and being on shows as a tint on the icon. As rows they read as selected navigation: an open Chat was a big green rectangle in the list of places. That left two places, which need no folding, so the “··· More” row that once gave way to the rest is gone; it, and a chevron on the Dashboard row before it, were ways to hide rows that no longer need hiding.
- Settings are things you set once: Accounts, Notifications, Theme, Plan usage, the phone’s sort order, and Docs. They left the ☰ dropdown and the foot for one Settings, the same content on a phone (the header’s gear, a sheet) and on desktop.
- The list has its own block: a “Sessions” title with its pane count beside it, then at the right the sub-agents count (a button, muted, so the green is the +’s alone) and, fixed at the far right, the green + (new window), then search with the filter button beside it. Search and filter share a row because both narrow the list. The list’s own line (State / Session · Sub-agents) is gone: grouping is a rarely changed choice, so it joined the filter menu as “Group by”, and the sub-agents count, which also switches their lines under each row (its eye is open while they show, slashed while not), sits in the title row.
Between the header and the usage strip everything scrolls as one, so the places scroll out of the way as you page through panes, and the Sessions block (its title and +, search and the filter, the filter chips) sticks under the header with a hairline once it has. The header, with the collapse, stays put: scrolling it away hid the way to fold the sidebar. The usage strip stays at the foot.
The header is just the logo and the name, with Live as the logo’s dot (green, or amber while it reconnects or the watcher stalls) and a dim collapse at the right, as on claude.ai. A status word in the foot cost a row to say what a dot says.
The filter opens beside the list
The filter grew out of the shipped one (#402). Its menu has State and, with two or more accounts, Account, both multi-select: a pane shows if it matches any checked state and any checked account, and none checked is All. One-of was wrong for both: “running or recently finished” and “these two accounts” are natural questions. The menu stays open while you check, since one click is rarely the whole choice.
Agent sits between State and Account: the kinds of pane present (Claude, Codex, Shell,
opencode and so on), each with its logo and count, multi-select like the others. It is the
same filter as the dashboard’s agent chips, one list in the URL (agent=claude,codex) that
the list, the dashboard’s charts and its Plan usage card all read. Before, the chips filtered
the dashboard alone, so a pick there and a list that ignored it said two different things
about the same fleet. On a phone the dashboard’s filter row, the chips and the session select,
folds behind the list’s filter button, moved into the dashboard’s header, so the page opens
on its cards. It opens the same menu, with Agent, a tmux Session group (the wide dashboard
keeps its own select for that) and Account; State and Sort by belong to the list and stay
out.
State’s options are the list’s sections, in their order and colours: Needs you, Working, Just
finished, Idle, each showing exactly that section’s panes. They were Running, Recent and Needs
you, which named different sets from the sections beside them: Recent was any pane not idle,
so it also held the working ones and those that needed you. The phone’s tabs use the same
words (All, Working, Just finished, Needs you), and the old filter=running and
filter=recent links read as Working and Just finished.
Then Group by (State or Session) and Sort by (Last activity, or Session order: tmux’s own session, window, pane order, which reads best grouped by session).
The button is a bordered square, unmistakably clickable, and it opens the menu to the right
of the sidebar, never over the list, so the list narrows in view as you pick. Everything that
narrows the list reads as one row of chips under the search, one per state, per account and
for the keyword, each with its ×, grouped under small labels named as the menu names them
(State, Account, Search: chips of one look read as one kind of thing), and a Clear all once
two are on (the menu has one too); the button counts the same and its tooltip names them. The
chips are the rows’ own account chips, small, with no “Filtered:” label: larger chips with a
label took two lines for three filters. Each state has its list colour (amber Needs you, green
Working, muted Just finished, neutral Idle) on its chip, its dot in the menu’s State and its section’s count, so the three
read as one thing. Grouping and
sorting are not filters: they change how the list reads, not what is in it, so they neither
count nor get a chip (a “1” on the button for grouping by session read as a hidden filter).
They are per-browser preferences rather than URL state, for the same reason, and the sort is
one setting with the phone’s Settings. The filters live in the URL as comma lists
(filter=working,finished, acct=, q=), so a link or Back restores them and an old
single-value link still reads (as do the old names, running and recent).
Panes that need you are the one thing a filter must not hide: an account or search filter once left “Nothing needs your attention” on screen while another account’s pane was asking. So whenever State is All or includes Needs you, every pane that needs you shows in its section, and those the account or search filter leaves out are dimmed and marked “outside filter”, so the filter still reads as honest. Picking only Working (say) is an explicit choice, so nothing is forced in then. Settings › Appearance can turn it off. An empty list says what was filtered (“No Personal panes need you”) and, if panes it hides need you, offers them (“5 panes on other accounts need you · Show”).
The phone has the same filter button beside its search, opening the menu as a bottom sheet with State, Account, Sort by and Clear all. It used to have a sideways-scrolling row of every account under search, which hid the one that was on: a list of one account’s panes showed no sign of being filtered. Then the active filters’ chips sat under search, but with the tab bar and the plan meters that was a third band of chrome over the list. Now nothing sits under search: the button’s count and tint say a filter is on, and a narrowed list ends with “8 Codex panes of 47 · Show all”, which clears the state and account filters. The phone’s dashboard, which has no search row, still names the account filter under its header.
Panels dock beside the sidebar
Settings and New session open as a panel docked to the sidebar’s right edge, over the left of the main column, with a sticky title and ×. The right of the screen is usually busy (the chat column, the pane’s overview), and the terminal in the middle matters least while you are choosing something; docking also keeps the panel next to the control that opened it. The panel is non-modal, so the list stays live beside it; Escape or a click elsewhere closes it. One helper does this for both, and a phone keeps its bottom sheet. A centred modal was rejected: New session had grown taller than the screen and scrolled its own title away.
New session is compact for the same reason, but not at the cost of saying how it works (a first cut hid every explanation in tooltips, and read as cryptic): a one-line subtitle says what it does; the accounts are a step after the agent, shown only for one with several (a wall of every tool’s accounts before you had picked a tool read as clutter), preset to the account that would start anyway, with Back to the agents and Start: a two-column grid of small chips, “+ Add account” the next cell, with a hint naming the tool they apply to; the session’s default is a sentence with a checkbox (“Use Work for every new window in qs”) and a muted line on what happens otherwise, not a “Default for … Not set” select; and each tool is a 52px row with a muted line, the account it starts on where it has several, then its model or what it is. Rows the account does not apply to carry no chip. It fits unscrolled at 900px tall; shorter, the body scrolls under the fixed title.
Its top row picks Session, Chat or Voice, so starting something is one place whatever it is. Chat and Voice hand over to their own buttons rather than repeating their start logic, and the row is a segmented control, not a first sheet, so the common case (a session) costs no extra tap. A choice that can’t start here is greyed, and tapping it puts the reason on the line below; with neither available (Live Mode is off by default) the row is hidden, so a casual user’s sheet is unchanged. The row goes with the choice: picking Chat or Voice carries it to the top of that sheet, pressed on the pick, so Session is one tap back rather than a close and a second + (the first version dropped it with the sheet, and there was no way back). It returns to New session when the Chat sheet closes, or when New session opens over a docked one; Chat opened from its own button never shows it. While a conversation runs, the other mode is a reason on the line (“End the chat first”), not a pressed choice that did not take: Chat and Voice each only bring a running conversation back, whichever mode it is in.
The collapsed rail keeps working
Folded to a 60px rail, the sidebar used to show its head and the live panes. A rail with nothing but “expand” made folding a trap, so the rail now keeps everything that works as an icon, top down: expand, the green +, search, the filter, Dashboard, Chat, Voice, every pane the list shows in its order, and Settings at the foot. The + opens New session beside the rail without expanding it, and the filter’s menu opens beside it too with its count. Search expands the sidebar and focuses the box, since a query needs the list. Each pane icon has the list’s own single running ring on its logo, an amber dot when it needs you and, with several accounts, an account dot in the opposite corner; hovering one shows the list’s hover card, with the account’s chip. The open pane is a soft filled square: the rows’ left bar and border, squeezed round an icon, looked lopsided. The pane icons scroll between the places and Settings.
The idle-count button ("+12") is gone: the rail lists every pane, as the list does.
The phone
The phone’s tab bar is a floating glass pill of Dashboard, Usage, Sessions, Needs you and Scratch, with a count only on Needs you. Usage and Scratch were a card’s view and a ☰ row, a tap or two deep for places people check many times a day. The five never change: with no plan to meter, Usage says how to get one rather than its tab vanishing and the bar shifting. Five is all a 320 px phone holds without shrinking the targets, so Chat and the mic left the bar for the ☰ drawer (and a pane’s heading, as before): they are opt-in actions that open a sheet, not places, a casual user never sees them, and a running conversation keeps its own bubble. It used to carry the state filter as five flat tabs (All, Working, Just finished, Needs you, plus Dashboard), which cost “Just finished”, the widest word, a tab for the least-used view, and left Chat and the mic up in the header, out of thumb’s reach. Now the states are in the filter menu like the wide list’s, Needs you keeps its own tab because it is the one view you go to on purpose, and Sessions leaves Needs you for the list without clearing a filter the menu set. The header is the title, a quiet + (New session, which used to float over the list’s foot and the rows' right edge) and the gear for Settings. The pill floats over the page’s foot, so the list and the dashboard leave it room at their ends. Rows keep their density: the mock’s calmer, roomier rows cost too many panes per screen.